Isn't the point of the article that as a non-user of gmail you can't opt out of giving google all your email? It's nice that you get a service for providing your emails to google, but what do I get?

Idk the ability to reliably communicate with a large segment of the world population?

I exchange e-mails with people who don't use Gmail and it's pretty reliable. Let's not pretend that Google is the only company who knows how to run a mail server. In fact I have more problems with e-mails coming from Gmail accounts (low quality text/pain, broken threads, etc.).

Why can't we mobilize for the ability to reliably communicate, AND avoid monopolistic privacy-eroding nonsense?

I mean this is a fact of life for pretty much everything. You can’t opt out of USD if you want to participate in the global economy. You can’t opt out of barcode scanners if you want to purchase groceries. People will augment open standards with proprietary, 100% dependent processes either because they’re easier to work with or they same you money, and often that means customers in turn must interact with those proprietary systems to get anything done.

I mean, that's the whole point of communications though, isn't it? If I tell you something, you can do that you like with that information - tell someone else, hand it to a state government, publish it in a paper, or just upload it to the servers of a corporation that I dislike. If you don't trust what other people are doing with your data, you can freely choose not to give them your data - albeit perhaps by giving up some of your communication methods and making your life somewhat more complex.

Here's a hypothetical (although as of right now admittedly VERY unlikely scenario):

It's 2035. Google has continued a worldwide decline with the invention of several highly accurate AI drive search systems deeply integrated into technology. Their video streaming service, which started declinging in the mis 2020s has just closed down following years of losses.

To try and regain its financial footing Alphabet has decided to slimline its offerings, closing several loss making services, including Gmail.

Most users of Gmail have been using it for close to decates, and are only given a couple of months notice that they'll lose their email addresses that they've relied on for thousands of online services, banks, businesses, etc. With no secondary account recovery process, billions of online accounts will become inaccessible for millions of users across the world.

----

Sensationalist? Absolutely - but you get the picture. Relying on a free 3rd party email address vs paying ~$10/year for at very least your own domain with free forwarding to a basic free gmail account is worth it.

When they start sliding down that slippery slope I'll act, but until then the service vs. cost is balanced enough for me.

I would still 100% go with Gmail.

I avoid 15 years of headaches and cost and only have to spend a few days of work transferring emails to a new provider? Sign me up.

Not to mention, it seems Gmail is the overwhelming choice for pretty much everyone; over 75% of users on my service have a Gmail email. If Google did actually sunset Gmail I’m sure every website would implement an email change system pretty quick to make sure their own users aren’t left out on in the cold, unable to log in post-shutdown.

I think even further than that, governments would just subsidize it.

What made me switch from Gmail is stories of people losing their entire account overnight with no possible appeal process due to an algorithm deciding there was suspicious activity.

> What made me switch from Gmail is stories

Yeah, pretty much. Anecdata is the bane of everything big. In a country of 330M people, you'll have a horrific murder every week. You have a billion email users, someone's going to have trouble.

You do realize that, realistically, it's probably more likely that Fastmail will fail, or you'll accidentally lose control of your own domain (or have it stolen) than that Google or Microsoft or Yahoo will "lose your account overnight". There are "stories" about startups failing and domain troubles too.

It's not the only reason, though. Just the thing that solidified the decision to leave. I just came to realize that I was depending on a shady entity for everything. The service I ended up paying for (which is similar to fastmail) can end up failing of course, but it'll take a while and I can always switch to something else once they go into administration. In comparison, I have no idea when or where Google might switch me off, especially since I do a lot of Android and Aurora store tinkering over various devices.

Even if Gmail was 100% reliable it would still make sense to not give them everything about my life. Besides, I also get much needed extra email features out of the change.

That there are occasional errors in flagging accounts is one thing. That there's absolutely no recourse is another. Why would I want to do business with a company that works like that?

Do you happen to have any actual cases you can point me to? I see this all the time in HN but it's never beyond "a buddy of mine said that he didn't do anything wrong and somehow they got locked out forever with no recourse".

Or it's someone saying that happened to themselves, and then they say they never did anything bad with their gmail. Which may or may not be true?

One good case I can think of is Crinacle. Very popular for his audio measurements site and does YouTube.

His Google account got flagged for something suspicious, Google had it shut down and without good explanations. He can't even get help through YouTube support and while the old channel remains, the Google account behind it appears disabled today. The only choice he had was to file a request that lead to nowhere and he basically had to start with a new account and channel.

He explained his experience about it in this video here: https://youtu.be/Jn1b3DztWnc?t=83

> His Google account got flagged for something suspicious,

Was that because of his gmail or Youtube?

That is just it, they never tell you

Does it matter?

Get banned from one google service for whatever reason (and you may never know why), banned from them all.

"The only choice he had was to file a request that lead to nowhere and he basically had to start with a new account and channel."

Incorrect.

Yes, that was, indeed, the only choice he had that was free, and from his living room, but he did have other choices.

Specifically: serving google with proper legal papers from his own lawyers that require responses. That costs google money. The money just keeps adding up and eventually a real person who has decision authority will look closely at the issue and fix the issue.

Assuming, of course, that the banning was improper - which I think we are all stipulating here ...

This was the incident that made me switch off of Gmail: https://www.thegamer.com/markiplier-fans-google-account-ban-...

> Unfortunately, and for reasons that are still unclear, this triggered YouTube's auto-detect system for spam. Hundreds of accounts in Mark's 'community' have been banned. ... Being banned from your YouTube account is one thing; ... However, these fans' Google accounts were banned, meaning they lost access to their emails, ...

The accounts may have eventually been reinstated, but to me it showed a willingness to ban an entire google account from a minor infraction in some individual service, which I was just not comfortable taking the risk on.

Not exactly the same as what you're responding to, but very similar.

I got locked out of my Gmail for a few years because I moved internationally and Google decided it just didn't like my new ip. I had access to the recovery email and would even get, "someone attempted to sign in emails." But Google just wouldn't let me in at all. I contacted support and they were no help at all. I tried to vpn back to normal locations but at that point I was flagged or something. I would try every few months after I gave up. About 3 years later it just magically let me in and I got all my stuff back. Still have no actual idea why it happened.

This happened to me, except I never got my account back.

I used cloudflare to host a custom domain, and then use their ROBUST email routing service to, plus a send as record to essentially make my personal Gmail use an email address hosted with cloudflare. Then, I set proton mail as a recovery and use it for NOTHING but that. As close as you can get to total security with gmail as far as I am aware. If google ever shuts down my account, I just move to protonmail or MS365 and have all my stuff already linked to my domain.